The Faculty Factor proposes that higher education has entered a its “third paradigm” since the post-World War II enrollment boom, after the faculty’s rise to influence in the modern “multiversity,” and increasing market pressures on higher education, respectively. This new era, the book argues, is one of “reconstitution,” in which the faculty is being more narrowly repurposed and, as a consequence, its influence significantly diminished.

Elements and drivers of this new paradigm include rapid advances in technology across campuses, increased faculty specialization, persistent market pressures, decreased shared governance and, of course, the growth of non-tenure-track appointments. And its essence? Calling into question “the centrality of the faculty.”